What is snmp oid? Explain it

Monitoring your network and staying on top of all that is happening in it is essential for the security and performance of your IT landscape as a whole. Lots of companies are help you out with this kind of monitoring and the Simple Network Management Protocol is one of them as it's known as SNMP.

What is SNMP?

SNMP is an Internet Standard Protocol used for collecting information from managed devices and for sending information to modify the behavior of these devices.

SNMP OID:

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), OID means an "Object Identifier."

To define OID, it's an address used to identify managed devices and their statuses. Want to know the temperature reading coming from a sensor at your mountaintop remote facility? There's an OID for that.

If you're a professional responsible for your organization's large-scale network management system, read on. Here we will break down the concept of OIDs so you can take that knowledge with you onto the job and keep your enterprise's operations running smoothly.

In other words, each device has its own unique OID and using that you can track the performance and status of that particular device.

Inside the MIB there are many different managed objects which can be identified by an OID or Object Identifier. An OID is an address that is used to differentiate between devices within the MIB hierarchy. The OID is used to refer to unique characteristics and navigate through variables on the connected device. The value of these identifiers varies from text to numbers and counters. There are two main types of Managed Objects:

• Scalar – A single object instance such as the device name determined by a vendor
  
• Tabular – Objects with multiple OID results for one OID

Let us take the example of an OID here.


1 . 3 . 6 . 1 . 4 . 1 . 1452 . 1 . 2 . 5 . 1 . 3. 21 . 1 . 4 . 7


Here is a breakdown of this address.

• 1 – this is called the ISO and it establishes that this is an OID. This is why all OIDs start with “1”
  
• 3 – this is called ORG and it is used to specify the organization that built the device.
  
• 6 – this is the dod or the Department of Defense which is the organization that established the Internet first.
  
• 1 – this is the value of the internet to denote that all communications will happen through the Internet.
  
• 4 – this value determines that this device is made by a private organization and not a government one.
  
• 1 – this value denotes that the device is made by an enterprise or a business entity.

These first six values tend to be the same for all devices and they give you the basic information about them. This sequence of numbers will be the same for all OIDs, except when the device is made by the government.

Moving on to the next set of numbers.

• 1452 – gives the name of the organization that manufactured this device.
  
• 1 – explains the type of device. In this case, it is an alarm clock.
  
• 2 – determines that this device is a remote terminal unit.

The rest of the values give specific information about the device.

• 5 – denotes a discrete alarm point.
  
• 1 – specific point in the device
  
• 3 – port
  
• 21 – address of the port
  
• 1 – display for the port
  
• 4 – point number
  
• 7 – state of the point

These are often depicted as a tree. An OID is formatted in a string of numbers as shown below:

1.3.6.1.4.868.2.4.1.2.1.1.1.3.3562.3

These numbers each provide you with a piece of corresponding information. For instance:

Iso (1) 
.org (3) 
.dod (6) 
.internet (1) 
.private (4)
.transition (868) 
.products (2) 
.chassis (4) 
.card (1)
.slotCps (2)
.cpsSlotSummary (1) 
.cpsModuleTable (1) 
.cpsModuleEntry (1) 
.cpsModuleModel (3) .3562.3

OIDs almost always begin with the same sequence of numbers; 1.3.6.1.4.1. We’re going to look at what these numbers mean in further detail below:

 1     iso - ISO is the name of the group that launched the OID standard 
.3    org - Organization specified next to this figure 
.6    dod - The US Department of Defense 
.1  internet - Determines that communication will be through the internet 
.4  private - States that the device is manufactured by a private company 
.1    enterprise - States that the manufacturer is an enterprise